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10. The Fallen
Death was no stranger to our small band of thrill-seekers, and it took its toll among our tribe. Many boys were dead before they turned twenty, and some of those who survived lived lives crippled by their past. Derick and Thomas froze to death when their canoe tipped over in a coastal bay known for having some of the strongest currents in the northeast. It was the middle of winter and they were all on LSD. I was supposed to be with them, but I’d overslept.Brett, a top athlete in the state, cracked his skull open when he was run off the road by a car as he was racing downhill on a bicycle at night. The car probably never saw him until the last second. He fell over a small bridge and hit his head on a rock in the river below. His brains were pushed back into his skull at the hospital. He had permanent brain damage.
Eddy had his legs cut off by a train when he slipped under its wheels trying to jump into an open boxcar. And poor Carl, he never left that shithole of a town. To this day he stands in front of the church we used to hang out at, drinking out of a paper bag, trying to not fall down. He’s the town drunk, the subject of ridicule by the new lords of the wasteland.
The others, the stragglers, the less committed, all straightened up when they became sufficiently scared by the law, their parents, or the face of death itself. “Ski” spent a year in the juvenile slammer. Others, whose names I can’t remember, all faded away and disappeared. There was a reason why this town had one of the highest per capita suicide rates in the country. The darkness cast its pall over all our fates.
On the porch of a house on Main St. sat a man in a rocking chair. All he did all day was rock back and forth. That man secretly terrified us because he symbolized our future. He’d attempted to kill himself by putting a bullet through his brain. Unfortunately, he missed and only ended up performing a nasty lobotomy while removing half his face. There he sat and rocked, forced to submit to a fate far worse than death, punished for failing to escape.
Next -> Part 1: Chapter 11 -- Initiation
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Duncan Stroud can currently be found dancing tango in Argentina. His book, "Legally Blind", is available in eBook and hardcopy